


Cannabis Sativa

by theowletqueen (nerdqueenenterprise)



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Drug Use, Old Man Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers is a little shit, TV Interviews, steve is also like 98 percent absolutely done
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-28 18:26:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10836876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdqueenenterprise/pseuds/theowletqueen
Summary: Steve is more than completely through with all the tv interviews and the gossip and all the downright idiotic questions he and, by extension, Nat get asked. Telling the moderator that he and Bucky used to smoke weed definitely changes the playing field.





	Cannabis Sativa

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like I need to put a disclaimer here.  
> Look, guys. I pulled this entire thing straight out of my own ass. Yeah, I study medicine ... since a month ago. Literally all I know is that Cannabis sativa (which is the actual plant name) aka marijuana, is in fact antiasthmatic. That is literally all I know.  
> So keep that in mind :p
> 
> And again, pawn_vs_player is my wonderful enabler~

The thing is - it used to be a cool thing to do. Smoking. Or, maybe not cool. Just - everyone did it. It wasn’t even a question. Well, not everyone, of course, but it felt like everyone. If the effects smoking had on your health were already known back then - well, Brooklyn certainly hadn’t heard of that.

So when sixteen, almost seventeen year old Bucky got a pack out of his jacket pocket it really shouldn’t have been a surprise to Steve. ’Course Bucky would start smoking, sooner rather than later, considering the neighborhood they grew up in. The problem was just - it’s not like Steve’s never thought of what Buck would look like with a cig hanging from his mouth. Bucky was a, let’s say, reasonably attractive guy and he’d probably look more attractive when smoking. Like … cool. All right, Bucky was cool. Not … attractive or anything, but -

Point is, they’re sitting on that wall, Bucky’s hair is an attractive mess and he’s laughing about something Steve said and whips out the pack of cigs like he’s been doing it all his life, and he offers Steve one.

And Steve accepts.

Which is a really fucking stupid thing to do when you’re as asthmatic as Steve. Hell, it’s probably idiotic for any asthmatic, but especially if you’re _that_ asthmatic.

So Steve nearly suffocates. So Bucky never offers again. He still smokes though, careful to not accidentally blow the smoke in Steve’s direction, and later never in their apartment unless the windows are open wide.

Then Steve is nineteen and they don’t have his regular meds at the drug store and the pharmacist offers Bucky some kind of special cigarette that’s supposed to help too, with some kind of herbs or whatnot.

They have a bit of a fight about that one and Steve doesn’t know why the hell he agrees to try it, eventually, but he does.

It’s good. 

That’s a bit of an understatement. It’s, well, it’s really fucking good. Half of the cigarette gone and both he and Bucky, who’s only breathing in the smoke, are feeling oddly happy, floating, dreamy.

It’s pretty awesome, if they’re being honest, and to top it all off, it does make Steve’s asthma be less aggressive. Even though it’s smoke. Go figure.

The stuff is awesome, though, and even thought it’s medicine, it’s affordable (Ish), and so - they might smoke some every now and then.

It became a bit of a ritual, really.

Of course, then there was Steve gettiing big and losing his asthma, and the war, and then Bucky wasn’t around, and then he was back but not really Bucky again, et cetera.

 

So he hasn’t really thought about their lazy, smoke-filled evenings together. It’s painful to remember what they once had and what they lost.

And then he’s on this … to be honest, he doesn’t really know what it is. A TV-Interview? Where it’s supposed to seem like he and the moderator have a lovely chat? Hell if he knows. If they could all leave him be maybe. He doesn’t need his face broadcasted over the whole nation every week, answering every question about his private life ever. No, he’s still not involved with Natasha, no, he’s not hiding a relationship, no, he’s not attracted to people in animal suits (He has _so_ many questions.), and yes, he still doesn’t think non-heterosexuality is a sin even though yes, he was raised catholic.

He’s lucky he remembers her name, Suzannah, otherwise things would get awkward really soon. He’s also lucky Natasha’s here with him, smoothly changing topics whenever they get too dangerous. 

“So, Steve,” she begins sweetly, probably having prepared another question to trick him into saying something the media will love to tear him apart over. God, he’s sick of that. Maybe he’ll just give them something to write articles about forever so they’ll finally leave him be. “You were part of the first generation who grew up in a world where alcohol was no longer prohibited. What was that like?”

He wants to give her a flat-eyed stare and some passive-aggressive remark so badly. There’s one already sitting on the tip of his tongue.

Instead, he smiles nicely. “Well, heh, I was never really one for alcohol. Didn’t really agree with me. Plus, given what we now know about the effect alcohol can have on you when you’re also taking certain meds, I think it’s a good thing I never tried it too much.”

She looks surprised, but maybe that’s just her pretending to be invested into the conversation. Making nice with the celebrity of the week doesn’t seem awfully thrilling either. 

“No way, you took meds! Were you sick a lot as a kid?”

Another prime example of how pre-Serum Steve isn’t important. It’s fantastic for his ego.

“Yeah, I had a pretty weak immune system. I was constantly sick. Think I had pneumonia more often than other people the common cold. Then there was the scoliosis, the bone density issues, the color blindness, the short sightedness, partial deafness … what else … oh, right, the asthma. Had all that ’till I got the serum.”

The moderator looks a bit shell-shocked, but given how Natasha’s still perfectly poised next to him with only the slightest of smirks playing around the edge of her mouth he supposes he didn’t offend too badly. She would have intervened otherwise.

“Oh dear …” Whoops, he actually did leave the moderator short of words.

“That must have been absolutely horrible.” She does some kind of exaggerated sad pout more towards the cameras than Steve, and he has to suppress an ugly laugh. This is such a fucking farce.

“Oh, you know …” Steve can feel himself at the point where he just doesn’t give a fuck anymore. “Makes for some pretty awesome stories, you know? Like that one time my best friend nearly accidentally killed me.” More like miles beyond that point already.

Suzannah - or maybe it was Savannah after all? Damn, he has no idea. - gulps almost audibly, eyes wide, subtly trying to search for the stage manager.

“Ah.” she manages with a weak smile.

“You never told me about that. What happened?” God, he loves Natasha. She’s just as through as he is with all the prying questions, but she makes this _fun_.

So he gladly tells her, observing the moderator with some form of sick glee. “So me and Bucky, we were … sixteen, something like that, it was a really nice sunny day and he’s managed to filch half a pack from someone, likely a fella at the docks. So we’re sitting on this wall, just hanging out, and he takes ’em out and offers one to me. Now, see, back in the day, we didn’t really know ’bout all the dangers.” Huh. Interesting. Whenever he talks about “back in the day”, he falls back into his Brooklyn accent. “Cancer, carcinomas, necrosis, that was all just fancy doctor words, made up to squeeze some money out of you. People often didn’t even live long enought to really develop any of those things, and the public wasn’t really informed about the dangers of smoking anyways, especially not Brooklyn folks. Everyone’d have a fag in their mouth all the time anyways.”

“Steve,” Natasha interrupts him with a sweet smile. “I’m pretty sure fag is the wrong word there.”

He sighs, a bit theatrical maybe, but come one, they can’t just change all the words’ meanings.

“It’s a derogatory term for homosexuals,” she informs him.

Steve throws his hands in the air in mock exasperation. “ _Everything_ is a term for homosexuals now!”

Nat snickers. “Oh boy, you did not hear about pansexuality yet. It’s completely valid, and it has nothing to do with kitchen appliances.”

“Well thank Heaven being attracted to pans isn’t some cool new thing yet. Sexualities are alright, they’re not inventing those, but why did they have to name it _pan_ sexuality?”

She shrugs. “I dunno, I think it’s Greek. Let’s talk about how you nearly died though.”

Steve grins. “Right. So. Smoking was a thing, for pretty much everyone, and so I wasn’t surprised Bucky’d gotten a pack, I always figured he’d start sooner or later, and I guess I just went along with it. He lit his up and mine up and he took a puff so I did, too, and then I started coughing my lungs out. The fun thing about asthma as bad as mine is - you’ll seriously never become a smoker, or, if you try, you die after your first cigarette.”

“But you survived,” Nat throws in.

“Yeah, barely. It was a pretty bad attack though, so Bucky never offered again. I mean he kept smoking, but he was careful around me, which was pretty damn nice of him.”

“Kind of sad, really.” Nat angles her body towards him in a single graceful motion, pushing her hair back behind her ears. She doesn’t show it, but he knows she’s bored out of her mind by the moderator too. “Wasn’t weed still legal as a medicine back then? So you never got to experience that, either.”

Steve considers carefully what she could mean, but comes up short. “Which weed do you mean?”

“Oh! Um, marijuana? Cannabis? I don’t know what you called it back then.”

“Cannabis!” Steve exclaims. “Uh, no, yeah, I know what that is. Funny you should ask, really.”

“Uh-hu, and why’s that?”

Well, he’s definitely past the point of no return now, and he can’t bring himself to care. “Well, cannabis actually helps against asthma.”

An evil smirk slowly spreads over Nat’s face. He knows she’s hoping for some incredible story about how Captain America did drugs.

“Yeah, so, Bucky went to pick up my asthma meds one day, ’cept they were out, so the pharmacist talked him into getting this tobacco-like stuff, said you use it same as a cigarette and it’s supposed to help and that it was all organic or something. So Buck comes back with it, I give him shit about how I’ll die if I smoke, but, um, I guess it just smelled really good, so he rolls me one and I start smoking it, and I think it took me two or three drags to really feel it, and, well, long story short, I got high as fuck, Bucky got high as fuck from just inhaling the smoke, and it was awesome and we did it again. Plus, I mean, it really helped with the asthma and the constant tightness in my chest, so there’s that.”

Nat’s eyes sparkle dangerously. “So you were a stoner?”

“I don’t know what that means, but if you mean whether I smoked lots of that stuff: I sure did. We eve grew some for a while, though it didn’t turn out as good.”

 

Nat makes it all the way through the rest of the show, backstage and a photo shoot until she breaks down into full belly laughter in the car, not even managing to start the engine from laughing so hard.

Steve frowns bemusedly. “What’s that about?”

She wipes tears from her eyes. “Just -“ Then she looks at him and doubles over in laughter again.

“Want me to drive?”

“No, no, I’m good, just - oh _God_ , Steve!”

Nat reaches for the ignition with shaky hands.

“You realize, of course, that America will talk about that for _months_ , right?”

Steve tiredly rubs a hand over his eyes and hopes that they won’t. All he wants in life is no TV interviews again, ever.

 

“Captain Rogers, is it true that you used to smoke marijuana?”

\- Sigh. “Yes.”

“Are you still interested in smoking cannabis today?”

\- Sigh again. “No.”

“Steve, are there any other drugs you’d like to try?”

\- Heavier sigh. “No.”

“Have you been looking into how to get your fix in the twenty first century?”

\- What the fuck. “No.”

“Are you ashamed of your drug addiction?”

\- What fucking drug addiction. “I don’t have one.”

“Captain, have you maybe tried looking for professional help with your problem?”

\- His problem is that he’s being molested by reporters wherever he steps and he’d like to enlist the help of Mr. and Mr. Fist if it carries on like that.

His general answer of “I haven’t smoked cannabis since Project Rebirth and don’t feel like doing so again.” goes largely unnoticed. Some more obscure left-wing newspaper writes a tearful story about how he’s being instrumentalized in the drug war (If only someone could tell him where that one came from …) and how he’s “raped of his own will” in this (He needs so many explanations.).

Natasha thinks it’s hilarious.

“Cap, do you like Bob Marley?”

\- “Who?”

Natasha doesn’t think that that’s hilarious.

“Yes, I’d like to get high again so I can forget this whole circus.’ doesn’t seem like an appropriate answer.

 

She’s got a window seat in her apartment big enough for two, so on a rainy Tuesday they’re both sitting there in comfortable silence, her toes wiggled under his thigh. He’s reading a book about people going to Mars and a guy living there, but so far it’s mostly tech mumbo-jumbo. She’s tapping away at her tablet. 

“Steve?”

He hums in answer.

“Ever been to Amsterdam?”

“No. Why?”

“Wanna go?”

He finally looks up, a bit bemused. “What’s there in Amsterdam that you want to see?”

“Nothing, it’s just .. has some amazing museums, good food, it’s a nice city … that’s all. Also I think it’d be good for you to get away for a while. Wanna go?”

“I mean … sure, if you want to.”

“Good! Our plane goes tomorrow.”

Steve snorts. “Wow, Natasha. Amsterdam must be really great.”

She smiles at him. “Yep, it is.”

 

She booked them into business class. Steve’s legs are happy.

 

They arrive at just half past four in the afternoon and spend nearly forty minutes at the passport control because there’s just one desk open. Amsterdam so far looks like it’s a lot less rainy than New York, but that’s about all.

It’s almost six before they manage to check into their hotel, a faceless slab of glass and steel, filled with men and women in suits carrying important laptop bags.

Their room provides them with a nice view of Amsterdam city, and Nat nudges him to take a quick shower and change and then go catch their dinner reservation that they apparently have.

“It’s nothing fancy, don’t worry,” she calls after him.

 

They take a taxi a bit out of the city. Nat manages some rather broken Dutch to converse with their driver, who then surprises them with rather good English and an odd smirk at the mention of their destination.

Steve doesn’t think any of it and lets the city pass by, making idle conversation with Natasha.

 

He doesn’t notice the smell until they’re right at the door. Then he turns around to squint at his friend.

“Natasha…?”

She’s wearing that knowing smirk of hers that tells him that this was precisely her plan and gives him a small shove towards the door.

“It’s legal here,” she says just before they’re approached by the waiter and brought to their table.

As Steve looks around, it’s evident that everyone - or at least most people - are smoking cannabis, and he and Nat are immediately offered a selection as soon as they’re at their table.

 

Natasha gets more and more relaxed as the evening wears on. It’s kind of funny to see her like that, but then again, Steve himself probably isn’t much better off.

 

They do go visit a ton of museums, and Natasha does force him to go shopping with her (he doesn’t mind it that much, really).

 

And much, much later, when Bucky’s back with Steve and plagued by panic attacks, Natasha shows up with a smirk on her face and a small metal box (“Don’t worry, it’s safe. Those airport dogs couldn’t have smelled it if they tried.”).

That smell together with something that’s pure Bucky that’s started to creep into their apartment isso nostalgic Steve nearly cries.

But admittedly the smoking does help Bucky calm down some, so Steve vows to visit the Netherlands with him one day.

**Author's Note:**

> Also! What're the laws concerning marijuana in the Netherlands like! Who knows! Not me!  
> Thank you guys for reading :)
> 
> (also: blah blah something about don't abuse drugs blah stay safe and so forth)


End file.
